China’s Role in Combating Global Climate Change: Pathways to Reducing Carbon Emissions in Buildings

Climate change is primarily caused by the accumulation of carbon emissions over the 200-year period since the advent of industrial civilization. To address climate change, nations must cooperate in achieving low-carbon development. As a significant player in global carbon reduction efforts, China pledges to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, and has proposed detailed implementation strategies. Over the past decade, China has built a tremendous number of green buildings, reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions in the construction sector. In the next ten years, China's urbanisation rate will continue to rise, and the urban population will further increase. Therefore, further reducing building carbon emissions is one of the crucial pathways to achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality in China. Drawing on the development experience of green low-carbon buildings in the past ten years, this work discusses several important aspects in China's implementation of building carbon emission reduction from the following perspectives: focusing on the key stage in the whole life cycle of buildings, the significance of actual measured energy consumption in buildings, renewable energy as an essential approach to achieving building carbon reduction, carbon emission factors, carbon emission characterisation, and carbon trading and carbon quotas.